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One of the most strategic and easiest ways of gaining success in the world of blogging is through WordPress. Entirely based on PHP and MySQL, WordPress is by far the most successful open source and free blogging platform. I remember when my secondary level school teacher once told me that “education should always begin with Math.” Quite applicable in the similar way, blogging should begin with WordPress.

Downloading the out of the box software, the self-hosted WordPress is a great deal that is filled with the most stunning options, choices and features that can change your blogging experience. If I pull in my experience, when I first started using this software, I was more like a sea with no fishes. However with time, I learnt a lot that gave my blogs a powerful push. If you’re new on the road of blogging, following are a few tips that can hold you in.

Tip.1- Use the forum properly

The biggest benefit that comes along WordPress is the active community of millions of users spread all around the world. 99 out of 100 times, if you have encountered any problem or question, you will find the answer of it through blogs by active users of WordPress. With all the work and time that we tend to invest on the problems we encounter, the major tendency most of us face is to panic. And this happens when we are clueless about a certain problem. At this stage, the first step is to visit the WordPress Forums. Remember there is a difference between the Hosted and Self Hosted versions of the software, so make sure you’re on the right website. Let me clear this out: WordPress.com is hosted, while WordPress.org is self-hosted. You may be tempted to post a thread right away on the Forum asking your question, but most of the time there is a better course of action. Best practice is to visit the forums and first search for the specific error or problem you are experiencing. For example, if your problem is an error that says something like “Database not available” then simply search the forums for that exact term. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you can find resolutions already posted.

Tip.2- Backup your files through your WordPress

This may sound like a ‘no-no brainer’, but it’s simply amazing that can’t be ignored! Grab in a plugin that has the power of backing up your files automatically on weekly or even daily basis. Even if now you have no idea how to restore a database or a backup file don’t worry about it. All you need to do is make sure that you have access to the backup process. If in any case you encounter a catastrophic situation and you have backups where they belong, then it’ll be just a matter of a day or so you will see yourself back on track.

Tip.3- Keep a clean copy

Once you find comfort while using WordPress and start publishing your blogs, you might get on the urge of editing some of your files due to certain errors. Often at chance, you may want to edit, add or even remove something. Nothing wrong with this as messing around is how most of us learn the ropes. If you end up editing a file, make sure that to save the clean copy somewhere beforehand. This way, when you get in over your head and really mess something up, typically all you need to do is upload the clean file and everything should go back to normal.

WordPress isn’t really as complicated as it looks. My advice is that follow these steps and see how smoothly you get in the learning curve on WordPress, along with lower level of frustration and the potential of making things a lot easier!